Levitating: Disco Joy as an Act of Defiance

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

Levitating, from Dua Lipa’s 2020 album Future Nostalgia, was a key part of pop’s disco revival — a glittering, weightless dance track built to make you feel like you’re floating. Its whole purpose is joy: the giddy lift of attraction and dancing, escapism rendered as shimmering, retro-futurist groove. There’s no hidden darkness here; the lightness is the entire point.

Joy released into a hard year

What gives it unexpected weight is its timing. Future Nostalgia arrived in the spring of 2020, just as the world shut down, and its unabashed dance-floor euphoria became a strange kind of lifeline — a way for people stuck at home to find joy and movement when the actual dance floors were closed. In that context, committing fully to pleasure and escape felt almost defiant: choosing delight in a frightening time.

The case for lightness

It’s easy to dismiss pure pop pleasure as shallow, but Levitating makes the opposite case — that engineering genuine, uncomplicated joy is a real and valuable craft, especially when joy is in short supply. Its enormous, enduring chart run suggests a lot of people needed exactly that.

What it measures like

On our measurements it’s bright, fast and buoyant — a sleek, propulsive nu-disco groove made for movement. Full profile on its song page.

Levitating appears on Dua Lipa’s 2020 album Future Nostalgia, released as the world entered pandemic lockdowns. Readings of the lyric are presented as interpretation. No lyrics are reproduced.